Her Pain; Her Pleasure

She was in pain.

The intense throbbing continued in spite of the medication and the prolonged and painful therapy she had undergone for over a year now. She adjusted her pillows to help support her broad shoulders. Her grandchildren burst into a simultaneous cackle of loud laughter and her pain was forgotten for a while. She smiled at them, participating, though not knowing what the joke was. They didn’t need to feel her pain. It was enough, that she felt it.

She joined in the revelry and the fun and teasing moved from one cousin to another. All her grandchildren were there – from eager five-year olds to twenty-three-year old near adults. And a joke was a joke whether or not the five year old understood the nuances of the eighteen-year old’s word-play. Laughter, just good old laughter had such power to communicate. Laughter and love bound people well.

Each time she laughed she had a shooting pain in her chest. Her eyes swelled with tears, she had no idea if it was because of the pain. The younger ones rallied around her, hugged her tight every once in a while, as if to remind her of the pain. She didn’t shrug off a single hug.

As she was lying down watching the revelry, she wondered if this was the best time to let go.

Would I carry this image of my family where I’d go? Would I be able to show this image to him? Am I being greedy for happiness, prolonging a weak and painful life for pleasure? Then again, what was the real pain. Was it just the strain across her left breast or the pain of not being able to see and play with more of her great-grandchildren.

The eldest came near her, and quietly asked, “Is it paining again?”

“No”, she smiled back, lovingly ruffling his hair, “I am fine.”

Painful Proof

Most of us are wary of pain. We take all possible measure in every possible way to ensure that we avoid pain. And most of us carry a host of sprays and gels and pills to ensure that we stop pain, if it does manage to become a part of us. There is no way we can fathom and understand pain (like pleasure), yet we understand when people are in pain.

There are some, that experience pleasure in pain, whether inflicted on the self or others. The ability of pain to give pleasure is ridiculous to many. When you look at this concept in the context of certain philosophies of pleasure, it takes on different (potentially contradicting meanings).

I digress. (But it was relevant, in a way to the Pleasure Principle)

We feel most alive when we are happy, the entire world seems to belong to us. We want to dance, sing, talk, or do whatever it is that makes us express this full-of-life feeling. In pain too, we express, albeit differently. We cry, scream, shout or do whatever it is that makes us express the hurt. In a state of experiencing pleasure, there is a subconscious awareness that we are alive, yet there is no way to point to specific place or a thing and say, here, this is why; this is where the pleasure is. In pain, there is a heightened (I was thinking of using the word painful) awareness of being. It is local, it is specific, it is (almost) tangible. No other experience makes us as aware of our being as pain.

Pain is proof that we are alive.

A Beautiful Prayer

दरारें-दरारें है माथे पे मौला
मरम्मत मुकद्दर की कर दो मौला।

A friend who doubles as my Urdu consultant and dictionary was not very pleased with the word for “repair” in this song. I was asking a question that wasn’t relevant to this line, yet she had to make known, her displeasure (which, of course did sound more like disapproval, then).

Why, I asked?

The word repair is so incongruent with the word destiny, she said. I ran far and wide in the dark corridors of my mind to find a response. She is very strong in her language and I didn’t want to sound Urdu-illiterate (though I am). Unable to find any argument worth deploying at that time, I let go.

Only to get back to her later, i.e today afternoon.

I asked her the proper meanings of the words मरम्मत (marammat) and मुकद्दर (muqaddar). Confirmed, that they meant repair and destiny, respectively. She added, vividly remembering our conversation from two weeks ago, that the choice of words came across as unsophisticated; it wasn’t incorrect and neither did it damage the context of the message.

I have come to love the song since I first heard it, on a promo on TV. This song, if you haven’t guessed (or do not read Devanagari or the font hasn’t rendered well on your browser) is the song “Arziyaan”, from Delhi 6 [IMDB] [Official]. Since the incongruent comment from my consultant, I have been thinking a lot about this song; the love for it, however, growing and the interest strong as ever, if not more.

Today morning, I thought about the song, and this line in particular. Whilst allowing myself broad and loosely worded poetic license, I thought:

Fissures, fissures deep, etched on my forehead,
Fill them, fix them; repair my destiny, oh Lord!

I was wondering of the person who approaches God with a damaged, broken destiny. I wondered of myself in places of worship. How I have prayed, other than the prayers and the chants I have been taught, when I really wanted to reach out. I remember, when younger, I wasn’t thinking straight, I once prayed in English. It was a request-prayer of sorts. All the way back from the temple, I was gripped by a cold doubt; would my prayers be answered? What if He doesn’t accept prayers in English? What if He gives preference to prayers in the local dialect? I have been to temples where I saw folks engaged in vigourous and involved rituals. The environment and the perceptive belief system that I grew up in, caused some sense of insecurity — till such time I stopped going to temples and places of organised worship for the sake of prayer (I now visit them as a student of architecture and a tourist).

I (think I) understand my friend’s mild annoyance at the choice of the words. This is a poem and in the language employed, there is infinite scope to make things beautiful – effortlessly. Part of the annoyance probably comes from what we are accustomed to listening. Asking the Lord to “repair your destiny”, I agree, is unconventional prayer. However, there is a raw, unconstrained honesty in the request. That, to me encompasses all the beauty possible in a prayer. Devoid of convention, bereft of formulations, empty of sycophancy. I also imagine the state of the devotee — the pain and numb helplessness, where only restoration of destiny will help. Imagine the state, also, when there is only one who is capable of the repair. In many ways, it makes you experience the same that the singer is expressing.

There aren’t many songs I pay attention to, but my good friend, caused me to dwell on this for a long while and forced me to find and make meaning of what I hear with such joy. That is, perhaps, God’s way of answering prayers, through friends. When reduced to their minimalist state, all prayers are questions and all blessings are answers.

There is much beauty in this song; made delicate and pure, because of the unsophisticated presentation.

A Sacrificial Post

Good things come out of sacrifice. Toil. Perspiration and hard work. What use; an easy life, what use; lack of struggle. In fact they even insist that a good artist is born only out of pain. Only those that have seen pain, experienced it — become good artists.

Endure, you must, else there is no glory.

Then someone finds out — there is nobody to fight against; nothing to fight against. No one disagrees, nothing is a hindrance. What we are doing is right and everything seems to be in order.

“This is your mind playing games; this is the invisible enemy!”, they cry! Your mind is your own enemy. You have to bring the enemy to the fore. You have to fight. For nothing is gained in an easy life. Doctrine.

So we fight. We toil, we believe we are fighting something, what it is, we may see if and when we kill it; overcome it. We make things difficult and pat each other for every difficult step we take, recognising the hard work we do, against ourselves, the invisible enemy.

We sacrifice.

I sacrificed too. Sixteen drafts before I wrote this one. Sixteen posts of possible expression were converted to a state of nothingness by this cruel index finger of mine that clicked the “yes” without as much a second thought.

This was a difficult post. And I am getting there.